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Step 1
Develop Wisdom. Wisdom manager is able to make wise decision quick and correctly most of the time, learn from mistakes, able to strategize and take advantage of rising opportunity and avoid unnecessary dangers, creating great teams and guiding them to great results. With wisdom comes with ease in carrying out the next few steps.
To develop wisdom, managers have to read widely, be analytical and have good understanding of the workings inside and outside his department. -
Step 2
Be Trustworthy. Trustworthiness means that whatever the manager promises must be carried out, in the process creating trust with his team members. Trust of his team is important if he is to be able to unite his army against their enemies. If a manager could not reward as promised, it is likely that his team member would not put in their best since they have no idea whether they would be rewarded or not. Same thing for punishment, if certain rules are set out but team members who flout it are not punished, it would create chaos in the company's organization and structure.
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Step 3
Be benevolent. Benevolence is understanding, accommodating and love for his team members. Show your team members you have their welfare at heart. Treat them like your family members.
But one must note that too much benevolence could spoil the army, making them too comfortable, thus sapping their fighting spirit. Thus Sun Tzu also proposed Discipline (Please see Step 5). Discipline would counterbalance the characteristic of benevolence. -
Step 4
Develop Courage. Managers should be able to face the mistakes that are made under his department because at the end of the day, he is responsible for what is going on in the department.
There is also another aspect where we must see courage as well and that is to make unfavorable or unpopular decisions. If the manager lacks courage in the form of making difficult decision, he maybe be leading his team member to 'slow death' because most of the time these unfavorable decisions can avoid short-term pain but causes huge damage that is accumulated in the long run.
Do your information gathering and analysis as thorough as possible before making the decisions. -
Step 5
Develop discipline. Managers need to develop self-discipline and discipline in teams. With discipline, managers would be able to deploy his teams to execute his plan effectively and efficiently.
He himself must have great self-discipline, to set a good example to his teams, gaining trust in the process. But again, too much discipline may cause the manager to be seen as a tyrant in the eyes of his team members. As such when instilling discipline, it must be moderated with benevolence (Please see Step 3).
